Bon Creole’s crawfish and spinach boat is a dish that has become a Festival International staple through the years. It’s been there over a decade, but it wasn’t originally created for the music and arts festival.

“We made this up for the Wooden Bowl Festival. We needed a new item, so my wife came up with the idea. We always did cook crawfish and spinach, but we we created this crawfish and spinach in a bread bowl and called it a boat,” explained Bon Creole owner, Randall Montegut.

Montegut said he tried introducing it to his restaurant in New Iberia, but they didn’t have much luck, “It didn’t sell fast enough for us to think that we wanted to keep it on the menu.”

It wasn’t until the dish was brought to Festival International that it quickly gained popularity. And it’s because of that popularity that they’ve had to develop an assembly line in order to keep up with sales.

“We actually cut bread in the morning and we get like eight people cutting and pulling bread because we can’t do it while we’re serving,” Montegut explains, “And we will get a system set up where as fast as you can fill it, we’ve got somebody passing it down the line.”

And people love the boat! Terri Colburn, from Idaho, tried it for the first time on Saturday. “Now I know why I saw teenagers eating it,” she said, “because if a teenager will eat this much spinach, I figured it had to be good. It’s fabulous!”

And Alvin Jordan from Dallas said the crawfish and spinach boat was at the top of his list of things to try at Festival, “It’s amazing. It’s absolutely one of the best things I’ve ever tasted. And quite frankly, we came straight here. This was the first stop.”

But local Eli Ruben, who says he’s had the boat for the past 8 years, sums it up, “Some people come for the music, some people come for the bread bowl.”